The Humble Abode

Confession.........I have always thought it was so silly that people post blogs about their apartments or homes or anything in relation. I don't know why I have always thought that......hmmm...... but I just have. Who knows, maybe I will think differently in the future. Though, the reason why I am posting this blog, which focuses on my new apartment in Salt Lake City, was because a dear friend asked me to, so I have obviously given into peer pressure.

As for my apartment, I absolutely love it. My buddy Caitlin and I were lucky to find it AND to get it. Supposedly, apartments go fast in our building and they really are great, well priced apartments. One reason why we enjoy it is that it's super close to Trolley Square and if you look through the windows, you can even see Trolley Square across the street. Overall, it's in a good location, not too far down the hill from the university, close to public transportion, gated to keep creepy stalkers away (well, hopefully), covered parking which makes me so happy for winter, not too far from great shops and restaurants, we have two fabulous roommates, Laura and Stacy, and really, is just super cute! Also, Caitlin and I furnished the apartment from scratch. When we moved to Salt Lake, we weren't sure if living in Student Approved Housing (FULLY furnished) at BYU-I was a good thing or if it was a bad thing (we had nothing!!!!). So, we are very proud of how it turned out, especially while being poor college students, but we feel we did a good job thanks to family, IKEA, and DI! So I dedicate this blog to you!

Our front living room! Don't you love my pictures I took in Europe!!!???

Our cute little kitchen!

Mine and Caitlin's bedroom
My personal domain
HAHA....I had to show this! HA, our tightly compacted closet! We obviously have alot of stuff! Well, thank goodness for my sweet, awesome tetris skills for they have paid off. (If you don't already know I love tetris and am really good at it!)

General Conference

This General Conference will be one I will always remember, for I actually got the opportunity to attend the Saturday morning session, but just barely! For the last couple of years, I have been TRYING to get my hands on tickets for General Conference since that I have never been!!!! So after moving to Salt Lake City, I thought to myself.......well, maybe now I can get easy access to general conference tickets.......WRONG!!! It seems that no matter how hard I try or while even living in SALT LAKE CITY, they're still impossible to come by!......dang it! But I do have one amazing bishopric with a counselor that tried everything he could in order to get my friend and me into at least one session, however, his efforts did not quite work out so Caitlin and I decided to get up early Saturday, to get into the standby line, and to be positive toward the idea of getting in. Little did we know how long the line would be......even arriving there several hours before conference was to start, but luckily the line moved fast, taking us closer to the conference building, though we were taken to another tremendously long line that wrapped around the building. We waited in the second line for probably close to an hour, thinking to ourselves......that we're SO CLOSE but we probably won't get in. It wasn't until the session was to start in 5 minutes that our line started moving REAL fast and we actually made it inside past security. Caitlin and I were SO relieved and so started celebrating.......until we tried finding seats. While President Eyring started conducting the session, the two of us were racing everywhere, trying to find at least TWO seats anywhere we could but all the ushers kept telling us "section full"............COME ON! We're totally in the building but we can't even find anywhere to sit....so maybe we shouldn't have gotten too excited as early as we did. After a little while and walking around, Caitlin and I did find two seats.....next to each other in a great spot! THEN......we finally high fived each other while saying....."we did it, finally!"

General Conference was AMAZING! It is a completely different experience when you are physically there in person than watching it on television or listening to it on the radio. It was so beautiful and so magnificent while listening to the church leaders, hearing the choir perform and the organ playing. I absolutely loved every minute of it. It was so wonderful and I am so grateful for the opportunity for which I had to attend!

As for topics spoke in conference, that brings me to my next thought and that is of gratitude. President Thomas S. Monson gave a beautiful talk on the importance of gratitude and since then, many people have been discussing it and seems to have been on my mind a lot recently. But I love how he spoke of it, how he challenged us to always reflect the virtue of gratitude, "to express gratitude is gracious, to act on gratitude is noble, but to always live with gratitude is to touch heaven." (don't quote me exactly....those were the notes I took). But also, he stated "cultivate in your heart an attitude of gratitude." I think that when we do walk with gratitude in our hearts, we shine, it's easier for us to focus on the blessings and the tender mercies we've recieved, we're more charitable towards others, we're happier and more positive, we perform better throughout our days and basically, we have better days overall! After this talk I then thought of all the different things that I need to show more gratitude towards. I even started making a list that I should record in my journal and some of those are:

-my teachers and the overall program that I am in..... even though I have never had so much homework and busy work before (especially my cadaver lab....but I am trying to be grateful for that.......trying REALLY hard)

-the fact that I have free public transportation for being a student......even though I have to walk several blocks to the train station or wait up to 30 minutes for the bus. I should still show gratitude towards it and take more advantage of it!

-my roommates (they're so great at keeping the apartment clean and I should give them more credit!....and they're so fun to be around)

-Salt Lake City.......there's so much to do, so many places to visit........even though it will take me a lot longer to commute than it did in Rexburg and the drivers here are crazy!

-my car.........especially in the winter time cause I tend to complain about having to defrost my windows or of how I have to scrap snow off when I should really be grateful that I even have car windows to scrape in the first place when many people don't!

-of course my family and friends because they're all so supportive and so great

-my church leaders and they're teachings

-my classmates....they're so helpful and fun all at the same time!

-the gospel....I wouldn't be who I was today without it!

-and much, much more.........the list just keeps going!

But this is a list I am going to work on......in showing more gratitude towards and to always remember what President Monson said:

"Cultivate in your heart an attitude of gratitude"

bAND of hORsEs

A couple weeks ago, my friend Jared and I went to downtown Salt Lake and jammed out to the band named Band of Horses! They were pretty rad! They sing one of my absolute favorite songs titled, "No One's Gonna Love You" and I was so excited to finally see them.....LIVE! They started out the show with their song, influenced by our great city......hence the name "The Great Salt Lake" and everyone went wild and loved it! It was so great, they put on a fabulous show, they performed so well, and I tremendously loved it. That night I got back, I made my roomie, Caitlin, listen and rock out to them and since then I've been obsessed with many of their songs and have been listening to them over and Over and OVER again!!!...........but rock on Band of Horses, rock on!

Post BYUI Graduation and PreOT School

So this summer was an absolute blast for me and part of that being due to not having a job......honestly, I am not ashamed of that fact nor do I have any regrets.......and you'll see why! I first started my summer break off with traveling throughout Europe for a month. IT WAS AMAZING!!! (I actually have another blog dedicated to that trip which I promise, one day, I will finish...ha!). I had the wonderful opportunity to travel England, France, Italy, Austria, Germany (just for a couple of hours to fly out of Munich.....but hey, that still counts!), and Spain. It was the neatest experience to walk around, explore, and to immerse yourself into various environments and cultures with such rich histories in art, music, literature, and architecture. It was the perfect trip for me, especially since I have always had a secret love and interest in photography, all the classic literature novels, art history, and architecture! Here are a bunch of photos I took throughout the trip!

After my adventures in Europe, I then started moving to Salt Lake City......slowly....ha! Therefore, I was going back and forth between Rexburg and SLC for a couple of weeks, playing with friends and retrieving all my stuff, which I must admit I have too much of.....for it took me several trips to get everything down to Utah. Though during all the relocating, getting ready for school, and apartment hunting, I was able to be spontaneous, embark in new adventures, and participate in many fun activities such as multiple running events (some of my family and I are trying to collect as many 5K and other event T-shirts and the funny part is that we determine which event to sign up for based on how cool the participant shirts are), canyoneering and exploring Zion National Park, shows, road trips to Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, and Grand Teton National Park, Jack Johnson concert, baseball games, and enjoying friend and family events. SO FUN! What a great summer to embace before turning my life over to the occupational therapy program!